30 Small Business SEO Tips You Need!

Improving the visibility of your small business is the most crucial digital marketing strategy your business will ever undertake. Trying black hat quick solutions may seem appealing in the short term however, in the long term not complying with Google's guidelines will have lasting consequences on the visibility and SEO of your website.

So we have created this 30 day step-by-step guide full of small business SEO tips to help you improve your online visibility, and give your brand the first initial push it needs to one day be able to compete with the best of the best in the industry.

Small Business SEO Tips:

1. Register Google Search Console: This is a completely free service set up by the one and only, Google, to help you monitor the health of your website and show areas where you can improve.

2. RegisterBing Webmaster Tools: Bing created their own take on Google's Webmaster Tools. Although it does the same exact thing as Google, there's no reason why you should not set it up to gain a little extra information!

3. Google My Business Listing: You will want to create a listing for your business, or if there is already an existing listing, then claim it. It is important for you to have a Google My Business listing as it will allow your business to show users a physical representation.

4. Keyword Research: There are many tools you can use to conduct for keyword research such as Moz Explorer or Google's Keyword Planner. You will need to conduct keyword research so you can properly optimise your website with keywords and search terms your users will use to search for your services.

5. Organise your Keywords into Groups: Now you have your keywords, you will want to organise them into logical groups to help you know what pages you need to optimise.

6. Target Long-Tail Keyword: Long tail keywords will, in most cases, have a lower search volume however, this means they will be easier to rank for. Rather than optimising your website for 'boots' a long tail keyword such as 'womens winter ankle boots' will allow your website to rank better.

7. Review your Keywords: Once you have your keyword list, search for them and see what results you get. Are there many competitors websites or commercial ads showing or maybe information sites and blogs?

8. Test Keywords with PPC An odd suggestion for SEO tips, however by running a short term PPC campaign you can see if clicks for the keywords you are targeting will lead to conversions.

9. Website Pages: Now you have compiled your keyword list, its time to put them to use and assign them to relevant pages on your website.

10. Website Structure: A good website structure can help search engines understand your website. Organising the structure of your website is a crucial element to Google spiders in being able to efficiently read your site.

11. Manually Crawl Your Site: Using tools such as Screaming Frog, will allow you to crawl your website on a page-by-page basis to see the state of your sites SEO. At the start, you will want to look into URLs, Page Titles, Meta Descriptions and H1 & H2 Tags.

12. Check Indexed Content: Using the site command "site:[yourwebsite.co.uk]", you can check to see if Google has indexed all of your website's pages (that's if you have indexed them in Google Search Console first).

13. Build User Friendly Content: Make sure all of your content is easy to read and to the point, NOT keyword heavy. Remember, you are writing content for people to read not robots!

14. Optimise your Navigation: Your site navigation aligns with the structure of your site. Make it simple and to the point, and don't forget to interlink content!

15. Optimise for Clicks: You need to ensure your copy is enticing to users and will persuade them to click and convert.

19. Don't Over Optimise: This is the most important SEO tips we have. It is very easy to keyword stuff unintentionally and over optimise your site which is bad for your SEO as Google will see your site as spammy.

20. Business Listings: Local SEO is a very important aspect to your overall ability to be able to rank. Citations can really help as getting listed on location specific websites will show Google you are authentic in offer services in the area you say.

21. NAP Consistency: Name, Address and Phone number - have this placed on every page across your website and the web in general.

22. Location Pages: If your business offers services in more than one area then we really recommend having a page on your website for each location. This will help develop your local SEO visibility in every area.

23. Areas Covered: If your business only has one physical location but offers services in other areas, then creating pages is still essential as they are very different to location pages as there is no physical location.

24. Content: Don't just create content for the sake of it. Base your content around the questions your customers ask and what your competitors are doing.

25. Page Speed and Mobile Friends Test: Using Google Insights you can see how quickly your website loads and if it is responsive. Both of these aspects are very important to your SEO.

26. Monitor Website Performance: Using Google analytics, monitor the amount of traffic, views, sessions and bounce rate of your site to see how you can improve your website to suit your users.

27. Small Business Link Building Strategy: This should be the last SEO job you undertake. Building links is important to improve the authority of your site to help you rank. You can build links through directories, guest blogs, digital PR and many more ways.

30. Add Conversion Tracking to Contact Forms and Phone Numbers: Google Analytics allows you to link site visitors with actions such as form submissions and phone numbers dialed so you can understand which pages and traffic sources drive leads and sales.

SEO if very important for marketing in 2017, so make sure you're doing it right!

30 Small Business SEO Tips You Need!

Improving the visibility of your small business is the most crucial digital marketing strategy your business will ever undertake. Trying black hat quick solutions may seem appealing in the short term however, in the long term not complying with Google's guidelines will have lasting consequences on the visibility and SEO of your website.

So we have created this 30 day step-by-step guide full of small business SEO tips to help you improve your online visibility, and give your brand the first initial push it needs to one day be able to compete with the best of the best in the industry.

Small Business SEO Tips:

1. Register Google Search Console: This is a completely free service set up by the one and only, Google, to help you monitor the health of your website and show areas where you can improve.

2. RegisterBing Webmaster Tools: Bing created their own take on Google's Webmaster Tools. Although it does the same exact thing as Google, there's no reason why you should not set it up to gain a little extra information!

3. Google My Business Listing: You will want to create a listing for your business, or if there is already an existing listing, then claim it. It is important for you to have a Google My Business listing as it will allow your business to show users a physical representation.

4. Keyword Research: There are many tools you can use to conduct for keyword research such as Moz Explorer or Google's Keyword Planner. You will need to conduct keyword research so you can properly optimise your website with keywords and search terms your users will use to search for your services.

5. Organise your Keywords into Groups: Now you have your keywords, you will want to organise them into logical groups to help you know what pages you need to optimise.

6. Target Long-Tail Keyword: Long tail keywords will, in most cases, have a lower search volume however, this means they will be easier to rank for. Rather than optimising your website for 'boots' a long tail keyword such as 'womens winter ankle boots' will allow your website to rank better.

7. Review your Keywords: Once you have your keyword list, search for them and see what results you get. Are there many competitors websites or commercial ads showing or maybe information sites and blogs?

8. Test Keywords with PPC An odd suggestion for SEO tips, however by running a short term PPC campaign you can see if clicks for the keywords you are targeting will lead to conversions.

9. Website Pages: Now you have compiled your keyword list, its time to put them to use and assign them to relevant pages on your website.

10. Website Structure: A good website structure can help search engines understand your website. Organising the structure of your website is a crucial element to Google spiders in being able to efficiently read your site.

11. Manually Crawl Your Site: Using tools such as Screaming Frog, will allow you to crawl your website on a page-by-page basis to see the state of your sites SEO. At the start, you will want to look into URLs, Page Titles, Meta Descriptions and H1 & H2 Tags.

12. Check Indexed Content: Using the site command "site:[yourwebsite.co.uk]", you can check to see if Google has indexed all of your website's pages (that's if you have indexed them in Google Search Console first).

13. Build User Friendly Content: Make sure all of your content is easy to read and to the point, NOT keyword heavy. Remember, you are writing content for people to read not robots!

14. Optimise your Navigation: Your site navigation aligns with the structure of your site. Make it simple and to the point, and don't forget to interlink content!

15. Optimise for Clicks: You need to ensure your copy is enticing to users and will persuade them to click and convert.

19. Don't Over Optimise: This is the most important SEO tips we have. It is very easy to keyword stuff unintentionally and over optimise your site which is bad for your SEO as Google will see your site as spammy.

20. Business Listings: Local SEO is a very important aspect to your overall ability to be able to rank. Citations can really help as getting listed on location specific websites will show Google you are authentic in offer services in the area you say.

21. NAP Consistency: Name, Address and Phone number - have this placed on every page across your website and the web in general.

22. Location Pages: If your business offers services in more than one area then we really recommend having a page on your website for each location. This will help develop your local SEO visibility in every area.

23. Areas Covered: If your business only has one physical location but offers services in other areas, then creating pages is still essential as they are very different to location pages as there is no physical location.

24. Content: Don't just create content for the sake of it. Base your content around the questions your customers ask and what your competitors are doing.

25. Page Speed and Mobile Friends Test: Using Google Insights you can see how quickly your website loads and if it is responsive. Both of these aspects are very important to your SEO.

26. Monitor Website Performance: Using Google analytics, monitor the amount of traffic, views, sessions and bounce rate of your site to see how you can improve your website to suit your users.

27. Small Business Link Building Strategy: This should be the last SEO job you undertake. Building links is important to improve the authority of your site to help you rank. You can build links through directories, guest blogs, digital PR and many more ways.

30. Add Conversion Tracking to Contact Forms and Phone Numbers: Google Analytics allows you to link site visitors with actions such as form submissions and phone numbers dialed so you can understand which pages and traffic sources drive leads and sales.

SEO if very important for marketing in 2017, so make sure you're doing it right!